Inflammatory Treatment and Chronic Pain Understanding your Pain and Progress Treatment Style at CCSR Your practitioner recognizes that most sports and spinal injuries require much more than a weekly spinal adjustment. In fact, your body will heal most effectively when treatment stimulates your body’s inflammatory response. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but inflammation is integral to the production of new cells. With this in mind, your doctor will treat your injuries through inflammation-causing techniques: active release, trigger-point therapy, and friction mas-sage (the Graston technique). These types of therapy will cause temporary inflammation in the treated area, encourag-ing the body to replace damaged cells with new, healthy cells.
The Treatment Recovery Curve Figure 1 (below) depicts the standard recovery of chronic, injuries. This graph is typical of patients who are dealing with serious or longstanding conditions. While these conditions cannot always be healed, treatment at CCSR can often reduce the pain to a manageable level. Point (A) on the graph represents a patients’ first treatment. For 2—3 days after treatment, the patient will experience an increase in inflammation-related pain (B). Happily, this is followed by a de-crease in inflammation and an increase in health (C)! At point (D), the patient has less pain than the treatment starting point, and sees his practitioner for another treatment. The next treatment will cause more inflammation (E), though this inflammation facilitates even more healing. As the graph indicates, treatment will eventually lead to a state of perma-nently reduced inflammation and manageable pain levels (F). At the point of management, treatment no longer requires weekly treatment. Instead, Dr. LaBelle recommends monthly or quarterly visits to the clinic, combined with rigorous home exercise and therapeutic activities such as yoga or massage. Facilitating your Recovery After treatment there will often be an increase in inflammation, which sometimes means an increase in pain! This pain can last up to three days, but it is very easily treated. Applying an icepack to the affected area is the easiest way to ease pain, though mild doses of anti-inflammatories can be taken for more persistent aches. Never treat inflammatory pain with heat. Heat sources will trig-ger the inflammatory response in your body, resulting in even more pain! Your doctor will prescribe stretches and strengthening ex-ercises through the course of your treatment. These exercises are essential to your recovery, and will ensure that your pain levels decrease and stay at a manageable level. Figure 1: Pain Levels through Inflammatory Treatment